When the Carnival is Over

AN EXHIBITION OF NEW WORKS BY JME POOL

SEASIDE ARTISTS GALLERY
Top Floor, Comino’s Arcade
133 Redcliffe Pde, Redcliffe 4021

Official opening: Saturday, 9 August 2008, 6pm

There is a sense of gentle vulnerability that flows intrinsically throughout the work of Brisbane artist JME Pool. Her sometimes unsettling imagery evolves from a place that is neither adult nor childlike, where creatures of the night creep menacingly from the woods to threaten the viewers own subconscious memories.

Hailed as one of Australia’s leading exponents of the “Spooky-cute” genre, JME Pool delivers work which skips around boundaries of good and evil and questions both childhood reminiscences and the adult conscience.

In this latest exhibition at Seaside Artists Gallery; ‘When the Carnival is Over’, JME Pool has taken these erstwhile dark memories and blended them with subtle religious symbolism and playful innuendo to form the axis of her unique world. The ‘Carnival’ symbolising the loss of innocence that occurs as the inner child becomes an adult in an often cruel and unfair world.

JME Pool states: “The child’s view of the world is very different to that of an adult’s. There is a certain innocence to their actions and very little cynicism. My aim is to draw the two ideas together. To create images of children that are, on one level innocent and naïve; yet still explore the innate scepticism of the adult perspective”

Having studied at the Berkenboom Technical Institute in Belgium, JME Pool’s works have been making their way into private collections both locally and overseas over a number of years. This has been boosted with recent showings in New York, Tennessee and Shanghai. In 2007, JME Pool’s work, “Toy Soldiers” was selected for the highly prestigious “Churchie National Emerging Art Exhibition”.